Opinion Prone

Okay. You know, now I’m just kind of confused.

We had our first look at the art of the DOGS OAV back in December. It was questionable, particularly for Badou and Haine’s designs, but I decided to be optimistic. This optimism seemed to have paid off, as the short trailer that surfaced last month looked brilliant. There actually aren’t many shots of Haine in the trailer, but Badou, at least, looked terrific. (Camoflague print is still missing from jacket, but I’ll live.)

Now, some character sketches seem to have surfaced, and it looks like we took three steps forward just to take ten steps back?

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I got back from MomoCon late last night. Still completely exhausted, and it will take me a while to catch up with everything, but it’s a good thing my LJ feeds are one of the first things I check back up on because it let me know that a trailer for the upcoming DOGS OAV is now up on its website! (Click the link that says “movie” near the bottom.)

The animation looks gorgeous and, for me at least, erases many of the doubts that came with the first look at the artwork a few months back. The character designs are very faithful, as are the backgrounds, and the action. The music reminds me a lot of Baccano!, which threw me off a little at first — it’s very energetic, upbeat, and kind of hookey, which clashes with some of DOGS’s darker undertones. But considering that the OAV will only follow the storyline from “Stray dogs howling in the dark” rather than Bullets&Carnage, the humorous energy isn’t all that misplaced.

The trailer itself isn’t a great indication of story, so those unfamiliar with the manga probably won’t be impressed by much, though the action does looks nice. I’m really eager to see a trailer that will show more general background music and that will show speaking parts. I listened to the first drama CD again not long ago; it still sounded great, so I’m excited to see it all match up with their animated images. Gleeeee.

In the meantime, I’ve got “volume 0” of Viz’s release of the DOGS manga on preorder and can’t wait to get it~.

So it seems that Jump’s launched a web site/portal/promo page for the DOGS anime (I can’t tell exactly what it is since I, uh, can’t read it), and it includes our first look at the promotional art for the OAV, which could be indicative of the style they end up with in the actual animation. My first thought is the realization that there are going to be a lot of sacrifices. Miwa Shirow’s style is very detailed, super clean, but occasionally chaotic. He also uses a ton of spot blacks, which is something I think almost always loses its charm when color is added (just take a look at Watchmen; hunt down the inked pages and compare them to the colored ones).

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What a huge sigh of relief. Looks like it’s going to be the best case scenario and all my fears from this post have been quelled. The DOGS anime will only be a two-episode OAV, which means we won’t have to deal with filling in a whole season’s worth of episodes with only one manga volume of content! That also means there’s a pretty damn good chance that the anime will follow the manga faithfully… so it’ll pretty much be an animated version of the sound dramas? Haha. It would be pretty hilarious if they used the vocals they already recorded and just put it to some pretty animation.

It might be too early to be speculating, but I wonder what this might mean for future DOGS anime? It’s hard to say how long of a project DOGS: Bullets and Carnage will end up being, but considering it’s scheduled to be at volume four by the time the OAV releases, there’s enough material to fill up a normal season now. Does this mean we’ll eventually see a normal-run series based off Bullets and Carnage? I’d like to think that chances are high…

Finally, finally wrote my review for DOGS.

It was kind of interesting that while I was writing it, I realized that it really isn’t as amazing or unique as I sometimes like to think it is. Honestly, I think I fell in love with the artwork more than anything else, but forcing myself to write what I think about the other aspects of the book was pretty enlightening. Funny how that works, huh?

I was thinking about also writing a review for the DOGS side story, Hardcore Twins, but I’m not sure if it’d be worth it. I mean, it’s like a 20-page comic introducing two characters that appear later in Bullets and Carnage… would someone really read a review for something like that when it’d likely take less time to just read the comic? Then again, I guess the same could be said for SEED Supernova, which I reviewed out of sheer boredom. Ho hum.

OMG FANGASM NOW.

OMG TAKAHIRO SAKURAI IS HAINE. AKIRA ISHIDA IS BADOU. JUST LIKE THE DRAMA CD. OH MY GOD. And Taneguchi of Code Geass will be involved. Holy shit. This makes me so happy.

I swear I don’t normally post this kind of fantarding nonsense. But I make the exception for DOGS because I love DOGS. I really need to get off my ass, reread everything that’s out and review the sucker because it really deserves more love.

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I totally had a different entry planned (it is sitting half-finished in another window, haha, but I guess I’ll finish it tomorrow), but then I read that DOGS finally, finally got licensed! I don’t think there’s ever been another title I’ve been as excited to see get snatched though I’m not too sure why this is, lol… maybe because nothing else I read is so randomly underground and unknown. But really, I’m still surprised it took so long! DOGS’s first volume is standalone and has been out since 2001!

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